Hyukoh Returns After 6 Years With 'Godspeed!', and the Casting Choice That Sparked Debate

Hyukoh dropped their first new music in six years on August 18, releasing the single Godspeed! alongside a music video that had already been generating conversation since it went live a day earlier.

The song itself is a quiet, emotionally layered piece. Rather than dramatic gestures, it charts the accumulation of daily exhaustion, the kind of low-grade heaviness that builds when nothing is technically wrong but nothing feels quite right either. The arrangement earns its emotional weight gradually: direct, unsparing lyrics in the earlier sections give way to building string arrangements in the second half, arriving at something that feels, unexpectedly, like relief. It's the first release since the EP 사랑으로 (Sarangeuro) in 2020, and the patience in the production suggests a band that knew exactly how long they wanted to wait.

The cover artwork was created by artist Ahn Min-jung, known for translating personal memory and experience into visual diagrams and symbols. She worked from conversations with vocalist Oh Hyuk about the emotional core of the track, and the resulting image reflects the song's tension between stagnation and the quiet will to keep going.

The music video, directed by rafhoo, who previously worked on Antenna from Hyukoh's project album AAA, stars Japanese actress Ando Sakura. She runs a marathon, boards a subway, and moves through the rhythms of an ordinary day, with the video weaving between childhood and adult scenes to render the texture of repetition and the slow weight of inertia. Hyukoh's team said they cast Ando specifically for her ability to bring depth and immersive presence to the role, describing her performance as capturing "the cinematic quality of time spent in repetition and stagnation."

The casting drew immediate attention online, and not all of it was straightforward praise. The music video premiered three days after Korea's Liberation Day (August 15), and some users on Korean online communities raised Ando's family background as a point of concern. Her great-great-grandfather is Inukai Tsuyoshi, Japan's 29th Prime Minister, who is documented to have held imperialist views on Koreans and their place under Japanese colonial rule. Some commenters labeled Ando a descendant of a "war criminal" and questioned the timing of the release.

It's worth being precise about what the historical record actually shows. Inukai was assassinated in May 1932 during the so-called May 15 Incident, carried out by young naval officers. He was never tried, indicted, or convicted at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, following World War II. The characterization of him as a formally designated war criminal is factually inaccurate. His son Inukai Takeru later served as Japan's Minister of Justice, but in the 1950s, well after Japan's defeat, which makes that fact irrelevant as evidence of a "war criminal family." Inukai Tsuyoshi's imperialist views on Korea are a legitimate subject of historical criticism. What is not legitimate is treating Ando Sakura as personally accountable for those views, particularly given that there is no indication she has ever endorsed them.

Ando's own record in Korean cultural circles has been one of genuine artistic exchange. She is internationally recognized for her roles in Shoplifters, Monster, and 100 Yen Love, and this year she appears in director Jeong Ju-ri's new film Dora, which was officially selected for the Directors' Fortnight at the 79th Cannes International Film Festival. That project represents a direct collaboration with the Korean film industry, and Jeong's selection at Cannes is a significant milestone by any measure.

Many viewers and commenters pushed back against the criticism, arguing that holding a living actor responsible for an ancestor's historical politics, particularly one born decades after those events, crosses a line that criticism should not cross. That counterargument has real weight, and it found substantial support in the same online spaces where the initial debate erupted.

For fans who have been waiting six years for new Hyukoh material, Godspeed! is the main event: a song that earns its emotional resolution honestly, built around a vocal performance and string arrangement that reward patience. The surrounding conversation, while worth having with clarity and accuracy, shouldn't obscure what the release actually is.